


Ask a Shapeshifter

by KittyViolet



Category: Generation X (Comic), Marvel 616, New Mutants, Teen Titans (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: American Politics, Boarding School, Cute, Cyborgs, Disguise, F/F, F/M, First Time, M/M, Machines, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Shapeshifting, Teen Angst, Threesome - M/M/M, Trans Emma Frost, Trans Female Character, Vibrators, Villains to Heroes, Weddings, X-Men Gold (2017) #30
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 19:46:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15371982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: A forum especially for mutants and others whose bodies are sometimes this, and sometimes that. Sensitive questions may be answered privately and confidentially at the writer's request.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Marvel comicsverse canon compliant through the end of Generation X (2018) and X-Men Gold 30 (2018); other canon should be consistent but may not be current. 
> 
> Mature rating applies to chapter five only; chapters one, two, four and six are teen and up, for sexual situations; chapter three is gen.

This is all pretty new to me and I’m sure there’s an easy solution I’m not getting; to be honest I’m embarrassed even to write and ask, but I’d be even more embarrassed if this kept on happening and my sweetie lost his patience and freaked out.

I imitate other people. Like, literally imitate: take their shapes. Usually to do that I have to concentrate: it makes me pretty good at doing spy stuff, which I like to do, although I sometimes blow my cool. I can do faces, facial expressions, clothes, hair, the works. I got kind of good at it a few months ago.

I also got my first really serious boyfriend, and we’re together a lot. Like, going all the way, rip-our-clothes-off, throw-all-the-sheets-and-also-the-duvet-in-the-laundry-right-afterwards together. He’s super-hot. Have you ever met anybody under thirty who looks really hot with silver hair and popped lapels? Well, that’s him. He goes for a sophisticated look but he’s so unsure of himself, most days. 

Except when he’s around me! We tongue-kiss in front of our housemate (who likes to watch; he also reads minds, so he’s kind of always watching whether we want him to or not). We shove each other’s pants down with no warning: we roll around on his bed, my couch, the floor. He’s learned to unbutton me fast, so fast, faster than I could ever unbutton myself. (I’m pretty buttoned up.) He likes to wear gloves, sometimes even when we’re in bed, which means he’s learned how to do quite a lot without touching me with his hands. I really love feeling his tongue on my shaft; he’ll hold my hand in his glove, grasp my leg in his other glove, and ride his tongue gently all the way up to my tip. 

It gets even better, sometimes (which is why it gets weird). My boyfriend’s powers mean that every time he does something like that, he remembers—like, really, remembers—how I felt all the other times we did it: it’s like some kind of exponential multiplier for the way I feel, all the memories inside me fueling him as he strokes me and gets to me and gets me—well, you know; and sometimes we do that together, and then he does it to himself, and we fall asleep and wake up and do it again. Once we did it three times in one night.

Which is kind of awesome and not what I expected from my first serious relationship, right? It sounds too good to be true.

And because I shapeshift, I’m kind of afraid it won’t last. Because when we’re really into it—especially, like, on our second time around—I think about him so hard that I turn into him. I’m not sure when I first noticed I had done it—I think I felt taller; I definitely had pale hair! I’m not sure when he notices, if he’s noticed, if he even minds; sometimes he’s so wrapped up in remembering my memories along with his own that he just keeps going and likes it. He likes to close his eyes a lot, and maybe sometimes he just doesn’t see. But what if he does? What if he likes me better when I'm him?

Also sometimes I’m someone else. You can be into more than one person at once, right? But this is still extra-weird, because it's our housemate, the one who reads minds. I imagine him watching even when I can’t be sure whether he’s watching, and I imagine pulling on that shock of pink hair, and throwing his glasses to the side of the room, and biting his neck and his arms, very gently, but enough that he’ll have hickeys that morning, and when that’s what I’m imagining, sometimes I lose some height and my hair goes away except for a big pink strip on top and my chin shape changes and I get this sarcastic grin on my face and I’m him.

My boyfriend hasn’t said anything, so far, but sooner or later he’s going to notice that. And it happens pretty much every time I get myself off when I’m by myself. 

So, to sum up: my boyfriend gets off with himself when we sleep together, and when I’m alone I get off with someone else.

It’s fun, but it’s weird, and I’m not used to any of it.

Should I just get used to it? Should I talk about it with my sweetie? How do you recommend I bring it up? I absolutely cannot tell our housemate, although I think that he already knows.

B.D., Manhattan


	2. Chapter 2

(Transcribed recording.) I dinna like the word werewolf and I dinna think that’s what I am because I’m nae magical and I have nought to do with the moon, but I do for certain turn into a wolf sometimes; when I was bigger than wee but smaller than grown I was sometimes a wolf and sometimes a girl, and I used to get dizzy sometimes, changing back and forth, so I could be a fierce one defending my friends and then be a student in a school. I got all confused at times. They got confused too. I used to think there was some bad magic involved.

That’s nae my problem anymore. I figured out how to just stay in between, how to stand on my two feet but keep the fur and the ears and the claws and all that, so I could spend all day in one shape, and I didnae have to change; to be honest that’s the way I like myself best, when I can be a lady and a fierce fuzzy wolf with strong bones all at once, when I can talk to my friends—and tell people off if they’re not my friends—and, also, scent whatever’s a mile away, so I know when my friends are coming, or when trouble’s coming, when it’s in the air. And also I can play with horses and dogs, once I show them that I’m nae a threat. 

When I’m all human and the like I feel gawky and awkward; when I’m just a wolf I have trouble communicating, and get too fierce for my own good. The in between form? that’s just right.

The most serious boyfriend I’ve ever had—like, we were going to go far, far away where we could get married—was so much like me: we were humans, and wolves, together, and we liked it when we could both stay in between. We would nuzzle so much and lick each others’ fangs clean and run in circles in the snow and it felt like writing letters. We rolled and rolled around together and got our fur all tangled up and we could still talk all about it. We were going to— we almost-- (recording breaks off; sobs)

(Recording resumes) But I canna stop my worries, even now. What if my friends dinna see me as all the way human? What if they see me as their favorite animal, or as some sort of pet? How can I get them to show me how they see me when I’m in my favorite form, when it’s a form they may not understand? 

When I was still in school I used to play very hard, like out of breath hard, like wrestling and wrestling, in my wolf form, with some of my friends. Two of my friends especially. Who were boys. They liked it a lot. I think I let them wrestle with each other, and when I think back on it now I canna stay there; I turn red and all. But it was fun. And when I turned back into a girl-- they saw me as a girl. And sometimes I think about them in ways that get me-- well, I still canna say, but they warm me up inside. Is it alright for me to think of them that way, together, when I'm in my favorite form, all furry and in between? When I remember our wrestling I want to bring those friends together again and have them wrestle with each other, and scratch me behind my ears, and I'd lick their necks and the small of their backs until the wrestling turned into something more. But that's something I can only do in my in between form. Is that something they'd want from me now?

I wish I knew how my friends saw me now, anyway. Whether they think I'm cute or fun to play with or just weird for wanting to stay in between.

I wish somebody would gift us the power to see ourselves as others see us. I’d feel a lot better, or else a lot worse. But it’s a foolish notion. What should I do? 

And one more thing. Is there any way I can get my friends to ask permission before they stroke my fur? How can I let them know they should nae touch my ears? I dinna want to come off as too sensitive. I like it when they brush the fur on my back, or comb out the tufts on my thighs, or scratch my head-- as long as they ask. I like that. But my ears are really sensitive. Especially when I can stay in my in-between form.

R.S., Westchester


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Ask a Shapeshifter:

I’ve been around for a while, long enough that it’s odd for me to ask you anything (especially as I’ve been asked more than once, and by friends yet, whether I write your column; as far as I know I don’t, though of course you may be another version of me); I am usually the one whom people ask, rather than the one asking, although at this point I’m not entirely sure why anyone would believe my answers, once they knew it was me. 

The one person I trust absolutely in this world, someone who literally always knew what I was going to do before I do it, passed away some time ago, and I’ve never quite been able to trust anyone since. 

Maybe for that reason, maybe for many others, I’ve done a lot of deceiving in my decades on this Earth (and in a couple of months I’ve spent on others). Sometimes I really liked it; it suited me fine. I have impersonated—it might be better to say passed as, lived as, or just was: a Mexican bandit, a Nazi secret agent, a double agent, an FBI agent, an ICE agent (that was uniquely awful, I couldn’t keep doing it), a bald telepath before bald telepaths were cool, two different pop stars with two different kinds of powers (one of them a ruby-throated singer), a charming and fuzzy teleporter, two mutants with sharp claws, the deeply conniving wife of a US Senator, several different kinds of Pentagon official, an environmental activist, a bookstore owner with a mysterious past, a fashion model, a cute guy made of ice, his former girlfriend, his former boyfriend, and a Greek American Republican campaign official with a severe drinking problem. I’ve also been in most of the docudramas so popular lately about superheroes, though never under my real name. None of them get it all right.

As you can imagine, I know a lot of secrets; I keep many, and have been entrusted with more. (There are a lot of files, and a lot of passwords, involved; I keep some of them safe and locked in a special belt, whose iconography means “please don’t touch.”) And I’ve done some things I regret. For decades I switched allegiances the way other people take off and put on their socks, for variety or for personal gain or in order to get back at my enemies or in order to secretly help former friends (half of whom can’t stand the sight of me now, not that they’d know it was me unless I wanted them to know).

The truth is that if I spent too long looking like just one person, or playing one role, at anything—in bed, at work, in my wardrobe, in my manner of speech-- I got bored. You might think that kind of quest for endless variety would be good for your sex life, by the way, but I have discovered that it’s a mixed bag. I have been many people, with many partners, but for much of that time I’ve been wishing somebody would bring my true love back. I want to tell her all about the shapes I’ve taken and the things I’ve tried with other partners, in the way that we used to do; I wish she’d come back to life so that we could compare notes. I never could surprise her. I could be curvy or flat-chested, or a guy who preferred guys, or a soft pillowy femme, strong enough to lift her (and willing to lift her) or willowy and yielding under her expert fingers and thumbs. Every time she would guess not only what I wanted that night, but who I was.

I could go on about how right we were together, how every turn and betrayal and plot brought us closer in the end. But at this point in my life that would be a column for Ask a Necromancer, not a letter to a shapeshifter who might just be another version of me, a letter I’ll probably never send. 

It is a letter prompted by melancholy, as well as by love, but it’s not a letter about sex; it’s about what I owe the daughter we raised together, and about how to be good.

I have one daughter whom I love very dearly: sometimes we have been close, sometimes we have been violently at odds, sometimes we just have not been speaking. When she was at her most vulnerable I took care of her, and—along with my great lost love— my daughter showed me what it means to care for another human being while expecting nothing at all in return. When she was in her late teens I gave her up, with great pain in my heart, to another kind of parent, or teacher, who promised that he could care for her more, take care of her better. I’m still not sure whether he meant what he said, or whether I now believe he lied.

But my daughter got through it. She has grown into a wonderfully self-sufficient, courageous, sassy adult who can manage herself and her friends quite well; she has become quite confident in the identity that suits her most, and those who know her at all know who she really is. I have loved watching her reach that point, even if I have had to do so from a safe distance.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending her wedding. Of course I did so in disguise, at first. I’ve kidnapped her, abandoned her, and even once presented myself as her; when I was bad I was very, very bad. But being around her now makes me want to be good. (And blue. I am naturally a deep blue.) When I made myself known to her, I did not know whether she would ask me to leave; her friends, of course, were instantly put on their guard. 

But she believed me when I said I was only there to stand for her on her big day. And I meant it.

Now I want to do what she would want me to do; I want to be good for her. I think it’s what my lost love would want me to do, as well. But I don’t want to ruin my own life in the process. And that means I have a big, bad decision to make.

I know many secrets. Many, many secrets. I know how to infiltrate and disable the Russian agency that ran Omega Red, and I know what the same agency (with some help from Latveria) wants to do before the next election. I know how to find all the airplane logs, all the dead drops, and at least half the wire transfers behind the funding for the nanobots that have been spreading anti-mutant hate. I know how to prove beyond a shadow of a newspaper writer’s waking dream that the money behind those bots is the money behind certain candidates. I know where the bodies are buried in Langley and Vienna, Virginia, and also in Vienna, Austria, and I know why a certain bad actor famous for his expensive suits has taken a few vacations in Liechtenstein. I even know what’s under that bad toupee, and where the cybernetic trackers in that hairpiece send the information they collect. 

If I can get all of that information into the hands of people who can act on it-- with their keyboards and their screens and their legacy media, or else with their teleportation powers-- I believe that I can make the world a better place for mutants, for shapeshifters, and really for all of us. I think that it is what my daughter would want me to do.

But if I simply come forward as my true blue self and reveal everything that I know, I am certain that I will be placed under arrest, and put in a dampening collar, and tried, and convicted of some of the crimes in which I did, after all, have some small part. I am also certain that if all of that happens, I will not be believed, and any corroboration that comes from any other quarter—even something that my daughter, with her talent for punching people fast and hard and unforgettably, digs up—will be dismissed as a set-up orchestrated by that famous deceiver, me.

I am a famous deceiver. I don’t always like that. Sometimes I just want to try out new shapes. I learned to deceive, after all, to survive! But now I want to be honest about what I learned through my history of expert-- and sometimes, delightful-- impersonations and metaphorphoses. 

How can I use what I know to help the people I now know I love without getting caught, and without being somebody no one believes? How can I come forward without coming forward, and what, if any, shape should I take when I do that? 

I’m writing you not because I think you know the answers—I am, perhaps, mostly writing to myself—but because writing a problem down, working it out in these admittedly lengthy sentences, might become my best way to decide what to do. But the sentences themselves keep changing shape under me, even though I am sure that I wrote them. When they are clear and fixed enough that I can send this letter to you, you may guess that I will already know what to do. I may be doing it already, right now.

As truly as I have ever been,  
R.D., Washington, D.C.


	4. Chapter 4

Dear Ask—

I have a simple problem but it’s totally embarrassing and I don’t think I’m too old to ask about how to solve it; if anybody knows I bet it’s you.

I love being able to change shapes! I’ve never felt guilty or weird about it in the least, and I don’t think any one should. Be proud of who we are! I have a great group of friends—they tease me a lot, but I still think they’re my friends—and none of them can change the way I do.

I only do animals, though. OK, animals and half-animal half-human forms (those are really hard). But I can do any animal, and those are fun! Sometimes we’re in the news when I do fighty animals, like bears and wolves. Once I did a wolverine to be fierce in a fight and for some reason my friends Wally and Donna called me Jonathan for days, which isn’t my name; they never explained the joke. Donna reads a lot; I think it’s from a novel she read.

Anyway, I can do fighty animals and also sneaky animals like voles and glass snakes and hummingbirds and awesome display animals like birds of paradise and Siberian tigers and entertainment animals like echidnas and desert hares and if I try really hard I can even do mythical animals like the chupacabra and the hippogriff! I can change size and make bird calls and growl and roar, too. 

My friends love it when I do all this stuff, even when it’s not so we can win in a fight. But I’m worried that they don’t respect me sometimes. it’s like, do you think becoming a tiger is a party trick? When I am a tiger I am very hungry and I want to eat meat. Not to eat people, that would be gross and wrong, but—it takes a lot out of me. And becoming a vole, even more so. Do you know how much voles eat every day? It’s so many times our body weight that I’ve lost count. The last time we tried to infiltrate Deathstroke’s HQ I had to become a vole for eight solid hours and the next day I ate literally every vegetable and every cracker and every slice of bread in the tower. Did my friends make fun of my appetite? They did. Dear Wally and Dick: “Polymorph wants a cracker” is only funny the first 28 times.

But that’s not my problem. This is my problem: I had my first serious girlfriend a couple of years ago and it went very very badly and my heart is still all smashed to bits inside, kind of like the large pieces of earth and the foundations of buildings that she smashed to bits when she started to use her powers for evil rather than for good. 

I really want to start dating again, or frankly just to hook up with some of my friends. There’s one who is super hot and loves to show off her curves and walks around our house almost naked sometimes, which is hot and weird and distracting and I think she just doesn't know better, even though also I've seen her kiss strangers. And then there's another friend who is a real Goth, who is kind of smoldering, and I have dirty thoughts about her.

And also there’s a dude who I’m kind of into, which surprises me—I thought of myself as a straight cis dude until recently, and now I’m starting to think that maybe I’m not, although I am definitely a dude more than half the time. I wish I could visit some other universe for a while and take some totally other shape there and maybe meet girls and maybe a boy or two there. I'd even try being a girl there and see what happens! I wonder whether I would be a curvy girl or a mystery girl with a long flowy gown and a cape or a really athletic kind of normal girl like Donna. And then I could maybe visit some other universe where I could be a super buff guy who's into guys all the time and hangs out at the beach. Or in a mansion in Westchester. I've had bad luck with mansions before, though.

But my problem is: why doesn't anyone want to be with me? Do other people my age feel this way all the time too? it's super-distracting, tbh. If could only take the right shape, would I find the right girl or boy or both for me? I’m afraid that my current friends just know me too well to date me. Though that doesn’t seem to stop them from dating each other!

I'm afraid they just see me as a comedian, someone to keep around for fun. I have been trying harder than ever (that wasn’t a pun—I think) to get people to think I’m fun and awesome and cool through the shapes I can take. I’ve been a hawk and a shark and a velociraptor and I’ve also been a sleek playful dolphin and a noble yet frisky Appaloosa and, for a comedy routine, a teenage flounder who suddenly became a giraffe. At least that one was funny. Funny I know how to do.

Nobody seems to think I’m sexy, though, whatever I do, and I can't complain to my friends, because I don't want to lose them as friends. But I'm hurting inside. Also constantly horny, inside. I have tried taking the shapes of rhinos and triceratops as a kind of private joke but nobody gets it.

I think the problem might be that whatever fierce or noble or frisky animal I turn into, I’m always bright green. I know it’s not easy being green, but is there anything I can do? Other than touch myself, I mean. I do that a lot when nobody’s watching—I bet all the shapeshifters do—but it’s not the same, and then I take a nap, and the next day I’m still the team comedian, and people still don’t think I’m sexy, and I’m still green.

Any words of wisdom here, Ask? Please answer! I know I’m a long way away.  
G.L., San Francisco, CA, Earth-One


	5. Chapter 5

Dear AskableShapeshifter:

Textonly letterwordwriting is difficultchallenge but may help selffriends and selfsoulfriends as well as self: have therefore decided to attempt textonly query! 

Textonly letterwordwriting difficult for self. Self has learned speech/conversation protocol through bootstrap- selfprogramming voicetone interpreter accompanied by kinesthetic-posture-decoder, which requires inperson selfpresence-loops. (Decoder and interpreter, with help of selffriends and selfsoulfriend, reduce misinterpretation within in-person interaction involving any selffriends, strangers, or friends of selffriends; cannot be used with textonly letterwordwriting.)

Self understands self at present as type of shapeshifter: informed!self knows many shapeshifters after time on Earth, including shapeshifters with Homo superior phenotype, such as girlwolffriend and youngerstudent Dustfriend. Additionally, self has met magic-shapeshifters; self has also encountered non-Earth-based phenotypic-genetic bodyshapeshifters, some of them #Skrulls hated/feared by Earthhero community. (Self does not want to resemble #Skrulls.)

Since Earth/arrival self has been toaster vacuum cleaner Apple IIe iMac iPod telephonepole helicopter convertible jetboots jetplane giantrobot as well as humanoid form to optimize socialization. Selfpreference usually for humanoid form when around selffriends except when fulfilling mission. Selfhumanoid form accepted he/him/his pronouns assigned to self by selffriends upon arrival on Earth (self was not consulted before these pronouns were chosen for self).

When with selfsoulfriend, self can take human-shape semi-merged form, being armor or clothing or part of body, such as glove; merged form can fit selfsoulfriend’s body for purpose of combat, defense, concealment, infiltration, or pleasurewarmth non-zero-sum fluid-emitting lifeglow energy-exchange.

For pleasurewarmth non-zero-sum lifeglow energy-exchange, self with selfsoulfriend has manifested many forms; selfsoulfriend appears to take pleasurewarmth from many forms, and self repeats forms that have given selfsoulfriend pleasure.

In common instance, selfsoulfriend can wear self as armor; self-armor encases selfsoulfriend, warms legs and thighs of selfsoulfriend, encases selfsoulfriend’s excitement parts, gradually warms excitementparts as sheath and increases frequency of vibration in response to selfsoulfriend dialogue until selfsoulfriend experiences warmth-energy discharge and non-zero-sum shared life glow. Armor sexexcitement formation has particular utility when selfsoulfriend is in a public place, or so excited that neither self nor selfsoulfriend can wait to get home.

Self also has special semi-humanoid form but with wraparound arms and legs; self can wrap selfsoulfriend in two arms, or in higher multiples of two, for muscle-massage manipulation. Selfsoulfriend then prepares for osculation, signals preparation with dialogue/enthusiasm. Oculation follows, accompanied by torsowarmth, further wraparound, and light squeezing, followed by extreme betweenlegs vibration. This second model maximizes relaxation; also maximizes in-bed humor (selfsoulfriend refers to model case as Twister).

In third model (one of first tested when experiments began) self approximates human boyparts form as closely as possible; self and selfsoulfriend come together in same configurations as two baseline humans with standard boyparts, osculation and embrace leading to paired boyparts coming into sustained contact. Self has ability (lacking in boyparts for Homo sapiens sapiens and for most Homo sapiens superior) to extrude own nontoxic responsive lubrication, providing assist to pleasurewarmth. Selfsoulfriend’s tongue has also been involved, applied to self’s boyparts, commonly reciprocated by tonguelike appendange self can develop from head or waist.

In fourth model for pleasurewarmth with selfsoulfriend, self takes humanoid form with girlsex bodyparts; after embrace-osculation, selfsoulfriend uses tongue, selfsoulfriend’s fingers, or boysex bodypart to penetrate self, or places hand on girlsex bodyparts in variable rhythm determined by positive feedback loop. During use of this model, selfsoulfriend addresses self using she/her/hers pronouns; code interface refers to self as girl!self. Nontoxic responsive lubrication also useful during this process, similarly resulting in pleasurewarmth and sexexcitement.

In fifth pleasurewarmth model, self builds both girlsex and boysex sexexcitement bodyparts; selfsoulfriend uses both hands and selfsoulfriend’s own boysex bodyparts, resulting in multiple instances of pleasurewarmth. Selfsoulfriend may place selffriend’s boysex bodypart between selfsoulfriend’s hands, for example, and then execute interior interface with self by entering self through girlsex bodypart, or by stroking girlsex bodypart with selfsoulfriend’s fingers.

In most recorded tests, fifth pleasurewarmth model results in highest rate of energy exchange per unit time; selfsoulfriend smiles broadly and closes eyes after execution of any model when uninterrupted, but fifth pleasurewarmth model, in trials so far, is most likely to result in fluid discharge, followed by dormancy on part either of self or ofselfsoulfriend or both.

Additionally, fifth model compatible both with she/her/hers pronouns coded as girl!self, and with they/them/theirs pronouns (no further code required), as well as with he/him/his pronouns selfsoulfriend normally uses for self in presence of other selffriends.

Self has also conducted successful experiments with hybrid multistage forms for pleasurewarmth; for example, girl!self wearing rest of self as armor!self, with lifeglow shown on hard pauldron and cuirass, but with flexible skirt, so that entry to pleasurewarmth parts of self comes only through selfsoulfriend reaching under and up, as if sneaky, or as if measuring. Despite having body-behaviour within normal range for adult Homo sapiens sapiens (since selfsoulfriend’s mutant power is purely cerebral) selfsoulfriend in this instance behaves as if possessing powers of exceptional response and dexterity in finger-digits. Selfsoulfriend and self have proven capable of intense pleasurewarmth solely through under-skirt-related contact with selfsoulfriend’s fingers and hands. Hand-only under-skirt pleasurewarmth, accompanied by gaze or spoken words, has led to selfsoulfriend's non-zero-sum lifeglow exchange and pleasurewarmth fluid discharge!

Hybrid situations that begin in this configuration, with selfsoulfriend hand under girl!self skirt, frequently lead to other configurations, e.g selfsoulfriend inside self as diving bell; self as extremely wide, thick bathing trunks around selfsoulfriend; self including restraints; self as vibrating suit of clothes. Beginning with selfsoulfriend hand under girl!self skirt and changing configuration during pleasurewarmth has generated high-level continuous pleasure!connection for longer time intervals than any other configuration, especially when combined with internally generated vibration. Experiment requires more instances, given record of positive results for selfsoulfriend (smile is further evidence) as well as for self; direct language exchange with selfsoulfriend consistently confirms pleasure after almost all configurations (exceptions are irrelevant to self's question, as well as embarrassing to self), but selfsoulfriend almost never expresses preference before experiments begin; choice of configuration is up to self.

Dear Askable Shapeshifter, given the data and interpretations above, what conclusions should self draw? Selfsoulfriend’s smiles give pleasurewarmth and lifeglow to self in nonzerosum energy exchange; self would give much for consistent pleasurewarmth exchange with self-soulfriend, whether in wraparound armsandlegs form or as armor or as girl!self or as both!self or in hybrid armor/skirt form. Highest feelingvalue to self comes not from particular experiment or exchange but from proximity of selfsoulfriend to self and from clarity and strength of data exchange; [loyalty], [trust], [safety], [freedom] appear to be useful terms for vectors involved. 

But humanculture evidence so far strongly suggests most humans have requirements or strong preferences among pleasurewarmth sexexcitement bodyparts; many humans also express strong if not exclusive preference for pronouns used by regular partners in non-zero-sum pleasurewarmth lifeglow exchange. Does selfsoulfriend have a strong preference? How can self tell, without disturbing or disappointing selfsoulfriend?

Does selfsoulfriend prefer third class of experiments, with boy!self? or first class, with merged armor!self? Would selfsoulfriend prefer (modal preference among US humans, though data remain unreliable) boy!selfsoulfriend interfacing with girl!self? Does selfsoulfriend truly accept self as both!and, with boysex bodyparts and girlsex bodyparts at varying times, or at the same time? If so, should self ask selfsoulfriend and other selffriends to give self pronouns they/them/theirs?

Wingedselffriend and iceselffriend have described formerfriendofselffriends as watervapor shapeshifter, boygirlbothneither, much like self. But watervapor formerfriendofselffriends no longer Earthresident; watervapor formerfriend now resides in deepspace, with no communication channel active. Self wishes self could have met watervapor formerfriendofselffriends, or any other boygirlbothneither, to compare recorded experience.

Self is uncomfortable asking selffriends— other than selfsoulfriend, closestselffriend, foreverfriend— about human-inimate pleasurewarmth matters involving shapeshifter boygirlbothneither body and human preference. But self cannot ask selfsoulfriend foreverfriend directly about selfsoulfriend’s own operating systems without risking selfsoulfriend discomfort, a.k.a. “being turned off”; some possibility evident from other selffriends that asking selfsoulfriend would make selfsoulfriend feel worse. Thus, asking Askable Shapeshifter first has highest likelihood of optimally useful answer. Self hopes for speedy reply. (Public key enclosed.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written at some point after the end of the Morrison run but before the Terrigen Cloud and the events of IvX.

Why am I diamond? Why did I fall for Scott?

I rose to the top of some very demanding professions—most recently, and most consequentially, headmistress of several schools— by following self-made rules. One of which was: never ask, in front of other people, a question to which you do not know the answer. Other teachers have their pedagogy, even the hippies and the products of progressive schools (I like to think that my disagreements with Ms. Pryde are a pure consequence of my aversion to certain progressive-school ideologies). And I have my pedagogy; it works—in concert with other teachers—for me. And yet the question persists.

Why I am diamond? Why did I fall hard for Scott?

I was not diamond for most of my years on Earth: I was, by the most modest reckoning, one of the top five telepaths on this planet, and nearby planets as well. I had to use that power to escape from my unforgiving birth family, and from the grasp of the first telepath I met, the only other telepath I ever fully trusted. Part of me still misses Astrid. Most of me says that no one will ever—ever— do what Astrid did to me again. 

I built up defenses, and defensive moats around the defenses, and traps and trebuchets and tripwires and metal-splint stoplines and anti-tank hairpins around the moats, so that no one could ever do that to me again; I built them with the technology of my capacious, elaborate mind. 

And then I discovered how to use sex as a weapon, how to dress like the weapon I wanted to be, how to get men and women—but mostly adult men—to see what I was pleased to have them see. 

I liked flirting with them, and going beyond mere flirting, and then stopping short, making them feel small; grinding them under my proverbial (and sometimes under my literal, bright white) heel. They liked it when I made them feel small too; I got them to give me things, not through direct mind control but through knowing how I could make them feel with what I showed them, with my half-exposed thighs, my thigh-highs, my midriff, my haughty chin, my clean hands. (Did I make women feel that way? I did. That was even more fun.)

I didn’t mind the power I accumulated—I like having power; it makes me feel safe—but my goal was always to run a school; a school where students such as I had been could come, a school where they would be safe. Naturally any adults who stood in the way would have to get out of the way, and I used my powers to clear the way. I could see twelve moves ahead. I was the White Queen.

Why I am diamond? Why did I fall for Scott?

You might call it poetic justice, if you hate me. Everyone who has at some point hated me—and that’s most of the people I’ve known; most of my teammates, and most of my friends—has mocked me for showing too much skin, for turning my femininity to advantage, for knowing what most men, and some of my very favorite women, wanted to see. (I pride myself on my talent for brutal honesty; also for holding things back, for keeping things mum. Which, I admit, Ms. Pryde can also do.)

Most of those people don’t know what I used to look like, how my body used to behave. Very few of them know (I’ve looked at their minds) exactly how my body used to be. I’ve come close to making sure, telepathically, that not even my birth sisters know.

I came up into a world run by men, mostly straight men, mostly vulnerable to the right combination of smooth curves and skin and flattering words; they were men who thought they owned the world. So I owned them. In my Hellfire Club days, sometimes literally: I controlled every dollar they had, though I could not have done that alone. More usually I owned them in the way that our most recent students, bless their colloquially inclined hearts, say “own.” I won, and they lost. They wanted to see someone, or something; that’s what they saw. That’s why I wear white. It shows how I blinded them all. 

If any of those adult men had looked at my students the way that half of them looked at me—and they couldn’t help looking at me that way; I ensured it—I would have considered giving them fatal cerebral hemorrhages. On occasion I did. (Manuel was a conundrum: so much like me in his art of manipulation, but pleased by the pain of others, and no teacher, and the least trustworthy mutant I have ever known. But he was a student at our school; I was responsible for him.) None of those men saw my motives as they were, my ways of taking a world that wanted to box me in and contain me and crush people like me and turn us into pawns, or take us off the board, and making myself its Queen.

Until Scott. Scott needed me, when he came to me, and Scott also saw me for what I was. Scott, too, understood what it means to have others see you, always, as a boss or a threat, what it means to have even your closest friends look at you and wish that you were different from what you were. But you cannot let yourself be different, because you’re supposed to be in charge. I take pleasure in being in charge; does he? did he? I think he did; did he admit it, at all, to himself?

Scott and Jean were Scott and Jean, and I have impersonated Jean in body, because Scott needed it, but never in personality, in soul; outside Jean, before we fell in love, has Scott ever had a friend who accepted him, who did not needle him and push him and tease him in hopes of making him unlike what he was?

When I was the White Queen I used to say I was High Femme, before most of our mutants knew what the words meant. I have the lingerie to prove it. I used to say I was a dom. I was a dom. But I wasn’t quite a dom, because it wasn’t a game, and it was never only a game; only once I have been diamond, and only with Scott, who is never kidding, and never caught with his guard down, have I been able to play.

But why am I diamond? The question might answer itself; Emma Frost, the White Queen, does whatever she needs to do, wherever she is, to survive, and I had to be diamond to survive. But Genosha was full of mutants who also did what they needed to do to survive, until they didn’t, and the walls fell, and my students—

What triggered the diamond? Not rubble or fire or explosions or the intense, nearly thermonuclear heat: it was the feelings, the pain of the people around me, who were not going to live through this. Those feelings were what set it off.

And since then I have been able to turn it off; to turn off my feelings, and turn off the power that allows me to sense everyone else’s feelings, and to get them to do as I like. When I am diamond I am a monad, a source of white light with no gender, no human or mutant body, a set of impregnable facets, each transparent in itself, but collectively a deflector. No one can get to me, or see through me.

It’s like having ruby quartz glasses. 

And since I am diamond, I can go back to not-diamond, to being the Emma nobody but Scott admits to liking, the Emma Frost whose heels and hauteur and eyeshadow and always immaculate hair are inseparable from her ability to take control, to survive, to save this ungrateful, slovenly world, for the sake of my students, for the sake of our school. 

Dear nameless shapeshifter (I think I know who you are): here is why I am diamond, when I choose to be diamond. Here is why I love Scott. Most of the mutants who write to you are confessing their vulnerabilities, showing their bellies, their insteps, their wish to be told what to do. I understand that wish; I satisfy it. Only with Scott can we tell each other; only with Scott can our barriers, not “come down”—that doesn’t happen, ever, with either of us—but move around. He understands what it means to live a life where you can never retreat from the world for long, where you have to be in control so that you are not controlled; where you need to control yourself in order to see what everyone else is able to see.

**Author's Note:**

> That's all the correspondence we have for now, but Ask a Shapeshifter remains open for further inquiries; seriously, let us know if there's another shapeshifter you'd like to see write in. (No promises.) As always, please let us know if you see inconsistencies or divergence from Marvel comicsverse canon; we'd also love to see more fic with trans!Emma Frost.


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